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Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass is a large mirror, taller than average human height, surrounded by an ornate, gilt frame. The mirror may serve as a gateway to an alternate dimension. Background Lewis Carroll, born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, wrote stories of a wonderland that could be entered through a looking glass in his famous works Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Although commonly thought to be fantasy or fairy-tales, the stories of Alice's trips to wonderland were instead a chronicle of the descent into madness of a woman by the name of Alice Liddell. In his stories he described a mirror that was at one point owned by Alice. Warehouse agents tracked down Alice, who was committing a series of murders at the time, and trapped her inside the mirror, though not before she killed one of them. The publicly known fantasy stories were Warehouse fabrications to hide the truth. In 2009, when Myka and Pete got into an argument while taking inventory of warehouse artifacts, and nearly dropped the mirror to the floor. In an attempt to steady the mirror before it fell and broke, they also jostled the Studio 54 Disco Ball that was sitting above and behind where the mirror was resting. In the processing of protecting the mirror, Myka's consciousness was trapped inside of it, thus releasing the consciousness of the murderer Alice Liddell out into Myka's physical body. Alice took Myka's place doing Warehouse business and went on a mission with Pete, eventually using The Jubilee Grand Poker Chip they were tracking to facilitate her access into the Warehouse. Once returned to the warehouse, Alice planned to the destroy the mirror. She was stopped by a concerted effort between Pete, Artie, Claudia, and Leena and remains once again trapped in the mirror. In its storage location prior to the temporary release of Alice Liddell's psyche, a label on the mirror read: :MIRROR :CHARLES L. DODGSON AKA :LEWIS CARROLL :FILE BLOCK :B732 . 3 MRS . 028 An even older hand-written paper label attached to the frame at the back of the mirror simply reads "MIRROR - Formerly owned by Chales L Dodgson, A.K.A. Lewis Carroll 1832 - 1898" but does not appear to contain any location codes as with the newer label. The mirror is now housed in an area of the Warehouse called the Dark Vault where sensory-activated or otherwise extremely dangerous artifacts are stored. How it Works It is unknown exactly how the mirror works, though it does sometimes simply reflect whatever is standing in front of it. When human, that image can frequently operate in a manner that appears autonomous. Pete frequently used the mirror for entertainment, playing ping-pong against his own reflection, though exactly how that image was created and how it continues to operate by itself remains unknown. The only clue to its operation comes from Alice Liddell when Pete confronted her in the Las Vegas hotel room. According to her, nothing came out of the mirror without something else going in, and this assertion held true when she was retrapped in the mirror and Myka's consciousness was set free. What is known about the mirror's operation relates to interaction with other artifacts. When interacting with the Studio 54 Disco Ball, a process Artie calls "optical divagation" occurred. Artie further describes the process as "kind of like an optical flare after a photo flash." Although he later says he really doesn't know how the mirror works, he initially speculated that the blast from the disco ball "fritzed the mirror's primary reflective capacity and then it probably clipped part of Myka's psyche and fused it" in the mirror. Real World Connections In the episode "Duped", Artie describes the interaction of the Studio 54 Disco Ball and the mirror as like the "shadows on a wall at Hirosima." He is describing the common effect that resulted from the thermal rays of "Little Boy," the atomic bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Pictures of the after effects of the explosion show that when the bomb detonated, the thermal rays encountered objects in their path. The resulting collision of rays and objects left shadows on walls, steps, and roads much like photographs, displaying a shadowy imprint of the object encountered, sometimes human in shape. Appearances * "Resonance" * "Duped" Looking